


The Longer Hunt

by StripySock



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Supernatural
Genre: Background Character Death, Backstory, Episode Related, Episode: s08e16 Remember the Titans, Friendship, Gap Filler, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Artemis walks away from the death of her father and her friend unsure of what will happen next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Longer Hunt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> For snickfic, a look at Artemis and her friendship with Prometheus.
> 
> This Prometheus and his backstory are a product of Aeschylus not Hesiod.

 

Her limbs were weak as she had set off down the road, turned her mind resolutely away from the charred corpse that was her father, now no more than withered flesh, consumed by flames as though he'd been long dead by the time the lightning was buried through his heart. He had not been her father in too long, not in this new world that they'd set foot in where he'd grown pettish and aggrieved by every small thing that failed to bend itself to his command as so few things now did. She grieved for him of course, but for what he had been, not what he had become in this land of electricity, blue slushies and godless people who brushed against her in the street and did not flinch, who did not know what she had been. In the days that come there is only the past to sustain her.

 

She remembered still, chasing down a deer on foot, fleeter than any woodland animal, her bow on her back, face smeared green and dappled like the trees around her, her maidens at her heels, yapping as though they pursued her, and the delicate pool of the spilling life blood, gift given and taken, one that she appreciated. She remembered jointing it neatly, dividing it amongst the rest as they chattered and slept and made merry, while she took the hero's portion (another merry game on her part at first at least) and roasted it upon the fire, folded it in damp dew-spattered leaves and leaving the rest behind conveyed it to Prometheus.

****

It was not yet high morning, he was awake and conscious, whole once more- if he ate now, it would be hours before once again the vulture pecked enough to expose it once more, and when he saw her coming, from many leagues away (for his eyes saw far) he laughed as though the warmth of the morning and the sight of her were enough to extinguish the gnawing pain that devoured his vitals from day to day.

 

He ate it from her fingers, did not touch her in the least as though he all of his fellow beings who wore the face of man and the body of gods, understood the discourtesy he would be offering her if he did so. At other times perhaps he would perhaps fear death, but when death was faced every day, there are others who in his place would have grown bold and sought to caress her with words and smiles and puling pleas to beg for her help. He had done none of those things however, had treated her as he would any other of the mild diversions with which he was sometimes blessed- the sea nymphs that occasionally swam close and near and looked up with eyes of wonder, even Ocean himself she had seen approach, and he always bade her go before the vultures returned. "I have seen death," she told him that first time in blank surprise, that he should be so unwitting of what she was.

 

"That I do not doubt," he had replied, "but you are a hunter, and they are carrion-birds, it is not fitting that you should see them work at their prey," and that at least she understood, did not wish to see the inevitable crumbling and dissolution of his flesh, no clean kill, given too early to the eaters of the dead. She turned and he held his tongue until she was gone, and yet still his agony echoed through the woods.

****

The next day she did not venture close, betook herself and her maidens to the deepest part of the woods, where the boar might be found, and sporting games be indulged in without the fear of impudent eyes attempting to see what should be hidden. There was a lake there, still and silent, where golden flowers cluster by the side and the wind whispers echoes of long past sorrow, and it is livened only for so long as the shouts and merriment remain loud. When Artemis scooped the water from the surface, as though the image is conveyed to her by some nymph, she saw Prometheus in his agony, hears once more the echo of his pain and let the water slip through her fingers as though she was disturbed.

 

She had no reason to be so. Prometheus has been put to the torture Zeus has allotted him, the punishment of daring to raise mankind above their allotted station, and she had felt a new rush of sudden ire at what he has done, at how humanity had spread across the earth. Yet still she found herself back beside him, the sea wind whipping at her braided hair as they spoke of many things. Day after day they met in such a fashion for the time before he was once again consumed, until she charged him with his wickedness in so causing the humans to multiply in such a fashion, and he threw back his head and laughed, bringing the colour to her cheeks, reminding her once more how old he was, how uncommonly old though he looked hale and hearty enough after a fashion. "Before your time," he said, "you cannot expect to know better. Your father would have you believe he set the stars in the sky, created the earth and all that is in it, sculpted man from clay and breathed life into it, but this is not the truth. He is the ruler of these things and no good ruler lets his people starve and freeze. I would not abide it and for that I am punished."

 

"Yet you brought their arrogance to fruition," she reminded him and kept her eyes firmly fixed to the sea as the wings of some foul bird brush her face for she lingers too long already, "your warmth and light has seen them spread across the land. Trees die in their wake and in their blind heedlessness they pay too little respect to us, the Gods.”

 

Silence falls for long moments before he replied. "If they were not so numerous, if they were not so well provisioned, then you would soon learn to regret it. The respect you disdain as too little is more than once could have been scraped by Zeus itself. It is their prayers, their implorations that fire you, power you. Without them you are lost," and he fell silent at that.

 

Artemis did not speak for a long time for the truth that he spoke had flooded her veins. She knew her worshippers, this beyond doubt, they were like a fine threaded web across the land, as though Athene's Arachne had spun them together with her at the centre. She could feel their whispered prayers, their imploring of her help and her pardon. Atalanta sent up quick thanks at the end of each race, the hunter gutting the boar at present was marking its flesh for her, the priests in the temples were wafting worship her way with smoke and chant, and it strengthened her obscurely- the blood pumped through her veins as they fill her with their fear and  their worship. She had never thought it was required, never thought there was cause and effect between them, had assumed if she had assumed at all that it was the other way round- they worship her because of her strength, not that their worship gives her strength. The truth was chilling but it was long before she entirely understood.

 

Now as she travelled her long weary way, journeyed away from the severing of those last ties to her kin,  she understood all too well what it meant to her to be so denied the worship she needed. Her flesh was weak compared to the hard bodied magnificence she had once been the possessor of. The bow Odysseus had used his great strength to bend and string had been a child's toy in her hand, she had crushed all those who would have stood against her. That she is stronger than those around her still, she counted as no great boon, for what are they still but mortals? To be stronger than them, would be like being proud of being cleverer than a dog, she could not do it. The years stretched out before her, long and weary and slow with no hope of end except at her own hand for the secret of her own demise had been kept safe and close to her chest, and she did not think these mortals would know how she was constituted.

 

She had grown to hate their food- the flesh of grazed cattle, killed where they stood, not taken in the hunt and she ceased to eat, ceased to walk amongst humans once more, betook herself to the mountains, to the forests where still wild things lurked and there was a space for her to seize and claim, a life that reminded her of something she had once known. She gave up on the thought of seeking out the few remnants of her kind scattered in all directions- the world had changed too much, when humans could in such a fashion dispose of her father in such a way, and she did not wish to see what has become of them, how they too have failed and fallen. But all things change.

 

It began with a twinge on her consciousness, the soft quiet tug of a worshipper's prayer and her eyes flew open in surprise. They are not unknown even now, she had heard prayers addressed to her by teenagers who adopted her cult for some reason, by even the occasional believer who hewed true to the old ways, but there have never been genuine queries. Always they had rung with the consciousness that their requests were most likely being thrown into an echo chamber, heard by nothing and nowhere. Such half-hearted attempts did not deserve even the weak response that she could offer, and she ignored them.

 

The request that made itself known on this occasion was nothing like those prayers however. It was hesitant still, but there was conviction behind it that something was listening, and when she traced it back along the source, she was struck dumb for long moments at the sight of the young woman who had closed her eyes for these few seconds and made an appeal for good hunting. In her hands was a ready loaded shotgun, on her back a leather jacket and she differed in all respects from the handmaidens who had run beside Artemis, in everything save her burning intent. If this had been the past, Artemis would have weighed her request, would have weighed the sacrifices that had been given in her honour before she deigned to influence fate in her favour. As it was she turned away for long seconds, would have ignored that first call had it not been for the sudden memory that blossomed within her.

 

She could remember how the sea salt had dashed against her face as she stood by Prometheus’s side and witnessed what punishment he had undertaken for the sake of humans, she had seen him broken after he was finally freed by Hercules, had left him lying in the woods, covered by the trees, soothed by the soft winds that he had lost for so long before ever she approached him again, gave him the peace he had lacked for so long. She remembered him faltering and falling once again for the sake of humanity, how he had looked at her at the last as though he had known her and believed.

 

Then she gathered her small store of reserves and brushed feathery distant fingers over the gun, murmured a blessing and bid the young woman luck with her prey.

 

Everything seemed a little brighter all of a sudden all was easier to bear. Somewhere, out there someone believed, and that small spark of a flame that one she would have disdained, once she would have crushed without a thought was all too precious for being so fragile and so alone. It warmed a part of her that had been too long cold. Nor was it the last. Still there were not many, but gradually others echoed across the wide expanse of her thoughts, asked her for help, for guidance, for luck in the chase, and moved as she had never been before by their plight she acceded to their requests, bent her hands and her skill to their cause. She ran light-footed alongside those who hunted prey stranger than that she had ever seen before, wilder by far and stronger too, unseen and yet a force and more than once she tended a wound that would otherwise have turned to poison. They were all women so far, and she read from their thoughts their disinclination to pray to what they knew and yet distrusted, and yet still a need for someone to listen. They knew she was there, the Winchesters must have spread the word a time or two, and that belief resonates once more.

 

She turned those memories of sacrifice and blood and pain over in her mind again and again, seeking to understand in full what Prometheus had seen in this undignified and low race but though she can not yet fully understand she moves slowly towards it, towards an ideal he had died for. That in itself was love she supposed though not a love that the Winchesters would understand. Artemis had walked the earth long enough since her power faded, since belief fled away, that she spoke many languages, worked in many ways, and yet still there were concepts which baffled and bewildered her as much as any philosopher, which she did not think she would ever understand. When she spoke, she could not know what others heard. Couldn't be sure that that which means so much to her, has any meaning to those around her. Not anymore. When Sam Winchester told her that she loved, she had agreed unknowingly, for she did love. As she had loved dashing through the long grass, skimming through lush meadows in the search of the elusive prey, as she loved her brother still, shining and golden, half of her in himself, as she loved the way the sunlight hit the hair of her beloved maidens as though Apollo too had lent himself to the worship of beauty, so she had loved Prometheus.

 

She had been of a mind to be insulted by their oversight, by their lack of knowledge, that they would believe she would so surrender herself to any man in any way, that vows of chastity held for centuries would crumble under so little provocation, that she who had blinded men for taking liberties, had had them torn apart by their dearest kin for daring to take her name in vain- daring to speak jestingly of what they wished from her would chastise Prometheus for taking another love. She had resented him in that first long weary hatred of humankind and of her weakening, for what he had done, for daring to leave them once more, to forge himself a new life, for going back to the arms of the mortals who he had always loved first and best, and hope had blinded her to the truth.

 

Artemis is not formed as humans are, but she understands enough now that they have but one word for something which comes in so many forms- like a jewel with a thousand faces. They could not understand that what she had meant was different from what they had implied and it was all over and past now.

 

She held on tight anyway to what he had been, wrapped the assurance around herself that Prometheus had died for what he had always believed in, humans in their multitudes of forms. She has buried many before, buried kith and kin that had not endured as she had, had not fought hard enough or long enough, had faltered as she thought her kind never could. Now she is alone but not lonely, and before her a world stretches out. Prometheus had first kindled fire for the earth and then sacrificed himself for those around him, and while she did not as yet share his sanguine expectations regarding humans still she could honour his memory by letting the spark he had lit in her endure. The tender souls that stretched out into the dark in search of her would not seek in vain.

 

The remnants of the old world fell away from her, and her bow leapt to her hand as she stepped forward into the unknown.

 


End file.
